Robot Doctors May Shorten Hospital Visits

Robot doctors? It sounds like something out of a Twilight Zone episode, but it may help reduce the length of hospital stays in bariatric surgery patients, according to a new study by Sinai Hospital of Baltimore.

The study, which included 376 patients undergoing laparoscopic gastric bypass surgery, seems to point to the virtues of "robotic telerounding," or postoperative visits from robots controlled by the patient's doctor. The robot, which is about five and a half feet tall, features a 15-inch screen that displays the doctor's face. Using a two-way camera, microphone and wireless technology, doctors are able to communicate with patients, look over lab results, inspect surgery sites, and more - all without having to be at the hospital.

"The technology used in the robotic telerounding offers both physicians and patients increased access to each other beyond traditional in-room visits," said Alex Gandsas, M.D., lead investigator of the study, in a press release.

The visits from the "robot doctors" seemed to benefit the gastric bypass patients as far as their length of hospital stay was concerned. Ninety-two of the 376 patients in the study who received both in-person and "robotic" visits from their doctor stayed an average of 1.26 days following their surgery. The remaining 284 patients, who were only seen in person, stayed an average of 2.33 days. The shorter hospital stays also saved Sinai Hospital a great deal of money - $219,578 for the increased number of available hospital beds, and $14,378 in room and board fees.

"We know from previous studies that patient satisfaction was high with robotic telerounding, but we wanted to learn if it also could deliver cost savings, and there's no question it does," Gandsas said in the press release.

The study, titled "Robotic Telepresence: Profit Analysis in Reducing Length of Stay after Laparoscopic Gastric Bypass," is scheduled to be published in the July issue of the Journal of the American College of Surgeons.

Robotic telerounding has been studied previously at other institutions. A study conducted by the Johns Hopkins Medical Institution in Baltimore from Oct. 2002 to June 2003 polled 85 patients undergoing laparoscopic surgery or urologic procedures at the Brady Urological Institute. Researchers found that patients who received robotic telerounding visits reported more satisfaction with their hospital stay experience than those who did not. In 2005, UC Davis Medical Center also undertook research with robotic hospital visits, sending a machine dubbed "Rudy" to patients' rooms.

Sinai Hospital of Baltimore Press Release - "Bedside Visits by Robots and Doctors May Get Patients Home Faster." Available at: http://www.lifebridgehealth.org/body.cfm?id=1099&action=detail&ref=262

UC Davis press release - "Move Over R2D2." http://www.ucdmc.ucdavis.edu/ucdavismedicine/issues/spring2005/features/6.html

PubMed - "Telerounding and Patient Satisfaction After Surgery." Available at: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=15454133&dopt=Abstract